In 2012, Radees and Zener ran a seminar on backup power for mission-critical loads. The principles have not changed: critical operations must never lose power. The tools have. With data centre capacity in the Kingdom growing rapidly and battery technology maturing, here is how we design backup power today.
The building blocks
- Generators for prime, standby and base-load generation, from compact sets to large power plants.
- Static UPS to bridge the seconds between a failure and generator start, with clean, conditioned power.
- Dynamic UPS combining flywheel and generator in one unit for large, continuous loads.
- Battery energy storage that rides through outages, shaves peaks and, combined with solar, reduces generator run hours.
Design principles that hold up
- Know your critical loads and how long each must run without the grid.
- Build in redundancy such as N+1 or 2N where downtime is unacceptable.
- Do not forget cooling. In data centres, power without cooling is only a few minutes of runtime.
- Test under load at commissioning and on a regular schedule.
- Maintain and monitor batteries, fuel and switchgear continuously, with clear service-level agreements.
Radees is a leading independent provider of backup power from 3 kVA to 10 MVA, including data centre power and precision cooling and battery-hybrid backup. Explore our backup power solutions or talk to our team.